


Bad Things

by Path



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures, Problem Sleuth - Fandom
Genre: M/M, Mobsterswitch
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-26
Updated: 2011-10-26
Packaged: 2017-10-24 23:39:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,099
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/269199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Path/pseuds/Path
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whenever Snooping Scout blows off work, he gets hit with a pang of guilt he can't suppress entirely. But then, he's never woken up in Peccant Scofflaw's bed before, so maybe his body just needs to catch up with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bad Things

**Author's Note:**

> Everything is Mobsterswitch and nothing actually hurt

If nothing else, Snooping Scout has the pride in himself to feel the faint pangs of guilt over the idea of missing work. Or maybe they're just anticipatory pain over Captain High And Mighty's reaction, but all the same, on those days when he's just exhausted or lazy, he always gets kicked in the stomach with the feeling "You should be there right now."

He's getting one of those now, waking up at somethingmumble o'clock in an apartment that sure isn't his, and isn't any of his team's, either. It would be a nice enough place if it wasn't for the feeling that everything is leaning on a slightly crazy angle, and also for the clothes and things strewn everywhere. It'd remind Scout of home in that way, except that Detective keeps coming by and hounding Scout until he makes some progress on the "filing system". It's clear nobody is picking this mess up. That's how you find your way around. Look for a landmark.

He's woken by the trace sounds of a phone ringing, and is vaguely aware that it was ringing in the back of his head for minutes now. He lurches up in bed, feels his hangover catch up with him, and crashes right back to the pillow again. He stays there and lets his brain settle back in place.

The phone no longer rings, but the place isn't silent. Somewhere fairly nearby, someone is talking- quiet and rushed, but talking, and the urgency catches Scout's interest. "Well, you're- (something something) and deal with it," mutters the voice. "And I don't care if- (quieter talk)- needed here. Do you _want_ him out where he can interfere?"

Silence. Footsteps. Pacing.

"So fucking act like it," says the voice sharply, followed by the ring-crash of the receiver being violently reunited with the rest of the phone.

He turns over in bed and tries not to groan when his aching head comes too. A moment later, footsteps, close, and Scout opens his eyes blearily. He doesn't even need to fake the grogginess. He's groggy enough just trying to move. Eyes meet his immediately, inches away. They're green like sick envy and wide with interest.

"Morning, sunshine," sings Peccant Scofflaw softly. Scout's stomach threatens to leave his body by whatever route seems quickest. This happens a lot lately- okay, not waking up in Scofflaw's bed, no, but the sudden realization that he is applying all of his fearfully threatening interest in Scout's direction. He has been the target of that malicious curiosity too often lately. This is just the capper to it. He hasn't woken up beside him before.

Scout really wishes he could remember what he did last night. "Uhhhhhhn," he says as reply.

He wants to close his eyes and go back to sleep, maybe forever, but Scofflaw flash-steps to the window and smirks. The room fills with too-bright sunlight as he cracks the blinds open, and he waits for Scout to groan a complaint before he grins again and closes them. The room, blessedly, dims. "Not much of an early bird, huh, scout?" he asks cheerily. "Me neither."

"Then what are you doing up?" Scout grumbles.

"Things to do, people to see," he quips, and then abruptly, he's back in Scout's face, closer than comfortable. "Or wait," he adds, "maybe that was the other way around. I get these things mixed up, sometimes. At any rate: important things to do, is why I'm up at this ungodly hour of noon."

Scout's brain hasn't quite caught up with the flow of catchy phrases. "What things?" he asks intelligently, and then his still-asleep mental processes freeze in their creeping tracks as Scofflaw smiles.

It's malicious and crooked and white like the moon, and his eyebrows quirk over his eyes and it's suddenly incredibly and openly obvious what Peccant Scofflaw wants to do. He wants to do bad things, and specifically wants to do them in Scout's own direction.

It's like a signal, a signal for Scout's body to leap awake hungry. He wants to tell it to go back to sleep, he doesn't ask how high when Scofflaw says jump, but Scout's never been good at controlling himself. When Scofflaw smiles like this (and Scout has only a vague recollection of that same look being applied one or two nights in the past, but he was already drunk off his ass by that point and the memories are rather dim), Scout's afraid, sure, because this is the king of the criminal underworld eyeing him up here, but he also knows that, against all expectation, he's going to like whatever it is Scofflaw has planned. Most of it, anyway. Most of it is going to make up for the rest of Scout's miserable existence.

So as soon as his brain catches up and forms that realization of _he means me_ , the entire rest of his body is already anticipating it. He takes a sharp shallow breath in, in that moment Scofflaw still has him caught in snake-green eyes, and it just hits the point home that this is not a thing he wants to escape from. That should be obvious by the fact he woke up here at all; he already used this to escape _to_.

Scofflaw's smile widens, cracking across his face. He doesn't speak again; it's not like he has to convince Scout of anything. Scout hates it- that Scofflaw'll talk his ear off until he gets what he wants. That means if he's quiet, Scout's already playing his game. But he doesn't dislike it as much as he does a lot of other things in his life. When Scofflaw shuts up, things are downright tolerable.

Later, he picks his way out of the maze of slum streets to his apartment (only by technicality outside the slums itself), his usual stalking mediated into something approximating a regular walk by dint of Scofflaw keeping his mouth shut (at least, as far as talking is concerned) and by the waffles he made later, and realizes abruptly that that sinking sensation of guilt was entirely gone for the last however-many hours.

So, as far as he's concerned, the seventeen-odd messages from Detective requiring his presence at the First Street Bank (where the Twilight Scoundrels, minus their ringleader, made off with most of the bank, walls included) and the nasty messages from the Captain (suggesting he find time to report in once a week or so if it suited him) can bite him, and rather than going to work at four in the afternoon, he has a long and almost-entirely guilt-free shower.


End file.
